“Is this our first R-rated Finance Committee meeting?” Joe Grause asked his fellow committee members with a laugh last month.
The Finance Committee had just reviewed Dorothy Stover’s citizen petition that would make all of Nantucket’s beaches topless. The committee, in a bit of a surprise, voted unanimously to endorse the petition and recommend that island voters approve it at Town Meeting in May.
Stover authored the proposal to seek “equality for all genders on all island beaches” by creating a new town bylaw that would make it legal for any person “to be topless on any public or private beach within the Town of Nantucket.” Stover, who was born and raised on the island and is the daughter of the late Town Clerk Catherine Flanagan Stover, is a sex educator who enjoys going to Nantucket’s unofficial nude beach near Miacomet.
Last month she told the Finance Committee “I was on the beach this summer and I wanted to be topless and I wasn’t able to and I thought ‘wait a second, women have the same equipment as men, why can’t I be topless’?” Stover said. “I wanted to bring forth that equality that I think is overdue.”
The committee spent nearly an hour posing questions to Stover during one of its meetings in mid-January.
“Are you creating a problem that doesn’t exist?” FinCom member Peter Schaeffer asked. “Right now, no one is being bothered if they want to be topless on a beach, maybe some mother might say please cover up my children are here, but you couldn’t find a case where someone was (issued a) summons. Is there really an issue here, other than democracy?”
Stover responded: “For myself, as a woman and other women I’ve spoken with, there is an issue. We’re not currently able to do this, we’re not able to be topless. This is a challenge and this is a problem currently on the island and nationwide. It’s equality, yes.”
There were also a few moments of comic relief during the meeting: “Is there any truth to the rumor that the Chamber of Commerce has hired you to do this as a way to boost tourism?” vice chair Stephen Maury jokingly asked Stover.
The committee considered a motion to take no action on her petition, as several FinCom members said it probably wasn’t the their place to weigh-in on something that wasn’t technically a financial issue.
“I wish we had a fourth choice which said this is outside the purview of the Finance Committee’s need to make a recommendation, or something like that, because this is something that should go straight to the voters without us potentially weighing-in,” said chair Denice Kronau.
Grouse agreed.
“Take no action, I think is, is the correct vote, because really I don’t think the Finance Committee has much to say about this and it’s up to the town to decide whether Dorothy’s suggestion and argument has merit,” Grause said. “There are lots of people who find this is something they’re not ready to tolerate yet.”
The committee’s deliberations seemed to take a turn, however, when FinCom member Joanna Roche reiterated that the issue does come down to gender equity.
“There is an equity issue,” Roche said. “This is the piece that worries me about the town Finance Committee saying we’re going to take no action or not adopt because we’re negating an equity issue, and I don’t think that’s appropriate. I would be probably comfortable with voting to adopt or voting to take no action, but I’m not comfortable saying no.”
When it came time for the committee to take a position, FinCom vice chair Stephen Maury offered a motion to adopt (a positive recommendation), which was seconded by Schaeffer. The committee then voted unanimously in favor of the motion.
Ten days later, FinCom member Jill Vieth asked the committee to reopen the hearing and reconsider its vote. Her motion, however, was defeated with only one other member, Chris Glowacki, voting with Vieth to reopen the matter for discussion.
“I’m kind of disappointed,” Vieth said. “I’m fine with you all voting the way you did. I was interested in changing my vote on that article because I think it’s a family friendly island and for us to look like we’re endorsing toplessness, I was personally uncomfortable with, so that’s what I was trying to do when ya’ll wanted to shut me down for trying to reopen this discussion.”
If Stover’s petition is approved at Town Meeting in May, it must then go to the Massachusetts Attorney General for review and approval before it would become law on Nantucket.
Stover said Wednesday that her best hope was that the Finance Committee would take no action rather than issue a negative recommendation on her petition.
“I thought that was the best I could get, to be honest, but the meeting took a turn,” Stover said. “I was surprised but I think it comes down to equality and you can’t not move forward. I think the island’s ready.”
